Pine Gap: Australia's Surveillance Dilemma

So last month we were on a flight with fellow Aussie YouTuber Friendly Geordies. Just a completely normal domestic flight, just regular old takeoff and you have the landing. Nothing out of the ordinary. I mean until we were pulled off the plane by federal police. If you are on board, just make your way forward to the front of the cabin. Yeah, that's us. Yeah, fine. I just wanted to have a quick chat to you in relation to either one of you guys. At the remote Pine Gap spy station... A collection of domes in the desert that plays very few Australians know much about at all. The most powerful American intelligence facility outside of the United States. No, no, close the gate, close the... No, no, no, stop! This is by far the scariest video we've ever made. We teamed up with Friendly Geordies to sneak into Pine Gap, which is one of the CIA's most important spy bases. But before we get into that, the most obvious question is, what is this giant American base doing on the ground? the other side of the world in the middle of Australia? Well, first off, it shouldn't be controversial to say the CIA wants to control the world, right? Like, surely there's no one out there who thinks they're not doing that. They've got the most advanced satellites in the world and they're sucking up everyone's information, which, you know... Good on you, but they've got a big problem, right? And I'll explain it to you over there. All right, so let's pretend this globe here is planet Earth, and then this can of toxic industrial lubricant is a satellite. So these satellites are flying all around Earth, just booming their signals down. But the issue with the Americans, right, is that they've got spy bases here. They can only access satellites up here. They've got no access to the ones down here. But if they were to build a satellite base in a foreign country like Australia, suddenly... they've got access to all the satellite signals coming down here. Pretty clever, right? So if they wanted to, you know, send a missile into a wedding in, let's say, in Iraq, or if they wanted to, you know, eavesdrop on conversation... If they want... If they wanted to eavesdrop on conversations down in Madagascar, they just do it through Pine Gap. Now, thanks to some average-looking whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and much hotter ones like Christopher Boyce, we have access to all these leaked documents exposing the inner workings of Pine Gap. Now, get this. The base is codenamed Rainfall and it's part of a top secret international spy infrastructure called Five Eyes. These CIA guys are literally out here laughing as Bond films. It's so embarrassing to read. But thanks to these documents, we know... all about Pine Gap. We know about their capabilities and how important they are to the US, but you don't really need to read these. I mean, unless you're a YouTuber and you want to look smart, these leaks are redundant. See, the American government is so proud of its surveillance of the whole world that their CIA agents just brag about it at every opportunity anyway. The Pine Gap satellites are the most sophisticated pieces of military hardware ever created by the United States government. They are very, very effective at intercepting signals. And the person on the other side, of course, can hear that person. as clearly as you can hear me speaking in front of you today. So who's using that communication signal? Is it Saddam Hussein talking to his generals or is it mum and dad talking to their kids? Now, you may think it's weird that a CIA agent is admitting to a room full of people that he actively spies on their conversations with their kids. But rest assured, the kind of people who attend CIA lectures are the kind of people whose grandkids stopped speaking to them years ago. And we'll probably forget everything in this lecture in an hour once the bingo game starts. Has anybody here been involved in weapons testing? I'll start. a few hands up. Now, just to be clear for all the nerds out there, this guy right here is technically an NSA agent, not a CIA agent. But for the rest of this video, when I say CIA, I mean CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, and every other US intelligence institution. I feel like I'm in the laundry aisle whenever I talk about the US government's monstrous global surveillance apparatus. For the rest of this video, UltraOxy, Free and Gentle, Original, Downy, it's all the CIA. We're talking about US spy bases here. But Pine Gap wasn't always this hub for global surveillance. For 75,000 years this place was the home of Indigenous Australians who were planet Earth's oldest human civilization. And then white people showed up. They kind of came out of nowhere 200 years ago and genocided the original Australians. Which conveniently made the outback a lot more spacious and offered some much needed privacy for civilized games of croquet or maybe a massive secret CIA base. So with the traditional owners of the land out of the way, everything was going well for the CIA in Australia. Until the 60s when all these people inexplicably started dyeing their clothes and doing acid and making weird noises but the one thing these hippies did which wasn't you know super annoying was they decided they don't really like the idea of a shadowy organization that wants to spawn you and control the world and in australia this meant there were constant protests and waves of people trying to break into this giant american spy base in the middle of the outback But let's be real, no one cares what thousands of hippies have to say. The real issue for the CIA came in the 70s when we elected a new leader. A guy called Gough Whitlam. Now he was super unique, firstly because his name's Gough. Like what the fuck is that? I've never met a guy called Gough. You've definitely never met a guy called Gough. Wikipedia doesn't show any other mentions of another person with the first name Gough. It's just a crazy, made-up name that'll never, ever exist ever again. But the other thing that made him unique is that he wanted an independent Australia that wasn't going to be bullied by foreign superpowers. He pulled Australian troops out of Vietnam and the Americans were like, what the fuck are you doing, Goff? I thought we had something special. Remember that time we got all those children and burnt them alive? Well, you're turning your back on all these fun times we had. And like a classic toxic boyfriend, the CIA started bugging Australian Parliament and surveilling Goff's party. And when Goff found out, he responded by threatening to close Pine Gap. And this was a step too far for the Americans. the CIA saw Goff as a serious threat, so they simply orchestrated a coup to get rid of the democratically elected leader of Australia. So how did the Americans get rid of our Prime Minister? Well, it turns out there's this completely symbolic position in Australian government called the Governor General. It's a bullshit remnant of the English monarchy, an unelected person whose only job is to dress like a fucking idiot and rubber stamp everything the parliament votes on. So a guy called John Kerr was the Governor General at the time, and coincidentally, he was also secretly working for the Americans. The CIA called him our man Kerr. They were paying for all his travel and generally sharing him with money so he could, I don't know, buy as many stupid hats as he wanted. And even more coincidentally, it turned out there was this dusty old law that said the Governor General has the power to dismiss the Prime Minister. And that's exactly what he did. I mean, this has never, ever happened before. The CIA essentially terminated the democratically elected leader of Australia. The Prime Minister, Mr. Whitlam, has been sacked. The opposition leader, Mr. Fraser, is the new Prime Minister of Australia. He was replaced with a more subservient Prime Minister who immediately renewed Pine Gap's contract and no leader ever since has dared to question all the secret CIA bases spread across our country. Now, we all know about the Americans and their little hobby of getting rid of democratically elected leaders in enemy countries in the third world, but it turns out they do this to their friends too. We accepted that our island was just a giant US military base and no form of democracy would ever get in the way of that. And by the way, calling Australia a giant US military base isn't an exaggeration. These top secret American bases are literally everywhere. Like this fucking thing. What the fuck is this? It's even more secretive than Pine Gap. They're the tallest man-made structures in the southern hemisphere, but we have no idea what they're doing. All we know is that every now and then when a passenger plane flies near it, it mysteriously malfunctions and suddenly plunges to the ground. prompting the International Pilots Association to say, well, we don't know what the American military is doing there and we don't want to know, but we'd like our planes not to fly there anymore. Now, look, all of you know that we're obviously very patriotic, true blue Australians. And unlike this, like, weak and cowardly and pathetic International Pilots Association who choose to just ignore the problem, we think we deserve to know what's going on in our own country, right? So, you know, obviously we don't have any experience sneaking into a CIA base, let alone the most important one. So we decided to speak to a... lovely lady called Donna, a member of a group called Christians Against All Terrorism, who somehow managed to sneak into the base back in 2006. So how did you actually get into the party? We weren't great, like we're not sleuths. We weren't... I've never broken into anything before. We kind of didn't know what to do. So one of our crew went to Bunnings and bought bowl cutters. It was all on camera and everything and later came out in court, the Bunnings guy. Testified that Brian went and bought these bolt cutters. Waterboarding some poor Bunnings employee to get this information out of him. Now Donna explained to us that one of the ways we justify having a brutal top secret CIA base in the middle of Australia is by technically calling it a US-Australian Joint Defence Facility. So while it's run entirely by the CIA, apparently Australians are meant to have some kind of symbolic role in it as well. Are there any Australian staff working at POKA? Yeah there are. Um, cleaners. Catering. I don't think they're in charge. Now Donna obviously couldn't just drive through the front gate, so they set out on a six-hour trek in the middle of the night over desert mountains to get in this way. But the weirdest part is that they told the Defence Minister the exact night they were planning to sneak in. They said that they were Aussie citizens who were concerned about war crimes and they wanted to do a citizen's inspection of this foreign facility on Australian soil. But for some reason, no one took them seriously. We fell over, we hit fences, we bumped into trees, like walking in the dark. There were cows who started mooing at us like shh shh shh. When I thought oh this is just ridiculous, like this is pretty crazy. And then I saw lights and it really strikes you. Then I walked closer and I could see the base and I could see little people walking around and I thought... I won't swear. Far out. I'm not crazy, like that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. That is crazy. I am right to be here. It's fucking 3 o'clock in the morning. There's people walking around this American spy base in the middle of the desert. What are they doing at 3 or 4 in the morning? And then we heard this, Drop the bolt cutters. On both sides there was AFP with guns. Get on the ground, get on the ground. I was like, you know what? I've been walking for 60 hours. I said, if I get on the ground, I am not getting up again. I said, I am so sore. She came behind me and kind of got the back of my head and pushed me to my knees. And I said, OK, all right, I can be on my knees. And then she got her boot and put it in, into my back. And I was like, like on the ground like this. And I said, you don't have to put your boot in. You don't have to yell at me. I said, you're the ones with the guns. Now, she may have had secret police standing on her neck, which, you know. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but I'm actually incredibly jealous that she's one of the only Australians to have ever seen the Pine Gap balls with their own eyes. This is one of my photos. Oh, you got the balls. My dream is to see the balls. Yeah, I really want to see them. So why would a random Christian woman risk potential life imprisonment just to protest this base? Well, it turns out the story of Pine Gap is much more personal for Donna. She's been there on the ground when Pine Gap's missiles hit their targets. Now, some say the US directly killed about a million people in the war on terror. Others say the figure is closer to 5 million. We don't know the exact figure, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Like the joke is no one actually cares when an Arab on the other side of the world dies. But Donna and her friends discovered a little war crime hack to make people pay attention. You see, if white people travel to the Middle East and go to these civilian areas in Iraq and just hang out there, it makes it much, much harder for Western governments to bomb that exact location. This was called the Human Shield Program and it was super effective, apart from the one day that Donna didn't arrive on time. I went to a place called Ashwalla Marketplace. There'd been a missile strike and this had just been a civilian area. There were a few little market stalls that had opened up for people to rush in and get some food and supplies during the war. And this place was blown to pieces. And I saw a sight that was something I've never seen before, just the chaos. There were pieces of human flesh around on the ground and puddles of blood. And it was chilling, it was haunting. And I was saying, why here? Why our marketplace? Why my child? What could I say? Yeah, you don't have an answer. No answer. The coordinates for that missile came from Pine Gap. Now obviously Donna was very motivated to get people talking about Pine Gap and lucky for her the police brought as much attention to it as possible. They dug up this 50 year old law from the Cold War called the Defence Special Undertakings Act that had never been used before to claim that Donna was a national security threat and throw her in jail. Long story short, they were thrown in prison until the government realised how bad it looked to throw these cute Christians in jail on behalf of the Americans, when all they essentially did was trek through the outback in their own country. So they eventually reversed the decision and let them go. But the government learnt their lesson and responded by tightening Pine Gap security and rolling out new draconian security laws that gives them the power to detain anyone without charge. So it's going to be different now. So it's going to be harder for us. Yeah. Good luck guys. Good luck. Now because of this, no civilians have been brave enough to go in there after Donna. But we're not regular civilians, right? We're YouTubers. And YouTubers are on the front lines of content, right? We're there, boots on the ground, ready to film whenever a Japanese man commits suicide. Whoa, did we just find a dead person in a suicide forest? We don't even flinch when the world calls upon us to film ourselves making out with our own sisters. If anyone's brave enough to sneak into the world's most significant CIA base, it's us. Now, these stories of Pine Gap guiding missiles into Iraqi weddings may sound like old news, but don't worry, Pine Gap's still as busy as ever. Right now, while Israel is on a rampant campaign to flatten Gaza so they can have more room to film their thirst traps, Pine Gap is in charge of providing targeting and analysis for their missiles, making sure that they hit the right hospitals and refugee camps and churches. Because of Pine Gap, Australia is directly responsible for the death of 28,000 Palestinian civilians so far. And we're not even at war with Palestine. I mean, like, while that's like super illegal, it does kind of make sense, right? I mean, Pine Gap is, you know, a big military base built on stolen indigenous land. It's only right for them to continue the proud tradition of wiping out indigenous populations across the world. Now, in order to get to Pine Gap, we've got to fly to the middle of Australia to a town called Alice Springs. It's a popular tourist destination. where you get to take your family. It's so whimsical. You've got Indigenous people serving you champagne while you stroll through the desert. With all these fun activities, you wouldn't even know that the CIA tracks every single person who enters the town. Security services of the US, Australia and our allies would typically be alert to anyone who might be coming into the town. So we figured now that we're on a plane flying to Alice Springs, the only way to not blow out cover in a town full of American spies is to blend in. We're not Aussie YouTubers, you know, we're not collaborating with friendly Geordies to sneak into one of the world's most important CIA bases. No, we're just one of the hundreds of regular, everyday American spies in Alice Springs. Now, we definitely weren't expecting this in the middle of the outback, but there were American accents everywhere. I think I might have spotted a few spies. Oh man, man. We just had fun. And Geordie didn't waste any time. He went straight in to investigate. What are you guys doing? They're just coming in. Now they may have pulled some fancy CIA mind- tricks and managed to convince Geordie they weren't spies but the rest of us weren't so easy to fool. So conspiratorial. They're Americans who live in our city. I have a way with an American accent he's a spy. Where did they say they were? mines dude look we just have to agree to disagree about these men we encountered at the airport but whatever geordie's probably got bigger problems to focus on like the fact that his house got firebombed and he's receiving death threats from the mob because of his political youtube video either way we obviously weren't going to make any big discoveries by speculating on random americans we find in the airport lobby so we decided to get into the car and drive through a ruined country to get to alice springs That is beautiful! What are you doing out here? In all honesty we're a bit lost out here. So we thought the best first stop would be the Tourism Information Centre. Are there any viewing spots? Because I know Mount Gillan you could see it. No, you can't. No, this is a very small road. When you drive onto that road it tells you to stop. You attempt to go in to find out, you'll be politely asked to leave. It's nothing to see there, they only apparently have guardouts there. It turns out getting into the base isn't as simple as we thought and our Now spy disguises weren't working very well either. Why have you got the same ties on you? Wearing suits you stand out like. Yeah, that's right. They're all particularly comfortable. If we want to sneak in successfully, we'll need to study the American spies in their natural habitat. And if you watch as many spy movies as we do, you'd know that the best place to find spies is at the casino. Luckily, there's a massive one just outside of town. This place is so American. Now this casino was not at all what we expected. There was country music everywhere. It felt like they had airlifted Texas and dropped it in the middle of Australia. Australia. Now, obviously, we did what we had to do to fit in. We had to gamble. You know, we didn't want to gamble, but we couldn't blow our cover either. And the fact that we do this in every single video we film with Friendly Geordies is just coincidental, and you shouldn't look into it. So we're in the middle of nowhere, right? Most of the patrons in this outback casino are Indigenous Australians. But then, no joke, everyone else is literally an American who works at the big CIA base just out of town. It's insane. Now, we obviously came here as a joke, right? We didn't expect to actually like see American spies, but there they were. Just chilling, just hanging out after work, playing some weird American game called shit or poos or... No, it was craps. It's called craps. What's it like living here? It seems a bit boring. Six hours and you're not really determined. Now, I really wasn't expecting them to be this open about working at Pine Gap. What are you doing there? Top secret stuff. It felt like they were all trying to impress us and outdo each other with how fancy they... their security clearance was. But I have to say, for a foreign army operating a top secret CIA base in the middle of our country, they were kind of fun to hang out with. Look at this, I'm rich. Get your monies, bro. Look, we had a fun time. It's a pity they'll probably hate us tomorrow night once they find out the guys they were gambling with the night before were going to sneak into their workplace the next morning. But before we went to bed, we realised we should probably try and get some legal advice before we try to sneak into one of the world's most important CIA bases. So we called our lawyer, Mark Davis. Hi guys, listen, you're doing me a bloody, a bit of a tough sandwich here. I know fuck all about Pine Gap, I'm finding out quickly. We realised we'd put him in a bit of a tough position, you know, speed reading niche esoteric CIA laws in the middle of the night. He's a little, there's lots of them, let me have a look at it. Um, okay, we've got security and defence premises, Bill, 2011. Certain members of the ADF can use reasonable and necessary force in the event there's an attack upon ADF premises. Establish a statutory regime of search and seizure powers. Oh my God. So they're essentially saying they could impose military law upon you if you get too cheeky here. So we'll get five stars. If we're not actually trespassing on the base, for example, one of them would be kicking a soccer ball over the fence and then asking if we could get our soccer ball back. Well, here's the ask. What are we calling that? Let's have a look back how they would have done that. That's like a projectile. That's not a projectile, is it? Can they use... Can they use... Reasonable and necessary force, that is it, this is armed soldiers. In the event of an attack upon ADF premises, do you think the soccer ball's an attack it might be? It looks like the laws have changed quite a lot since Donna went in. This place has become much more dangerous for civilians. No one is filmed inside the premises, even the perimeter of the premises. for a good 20 years. When you think of where have you seen such footage? Never. It's pretty hard to find it. This is a very secretive base now, particularly with the Americans there. Yet there's been almost no coverage of it, has there? Does anyone even try to cover it? Does it even exist anymore? It used to be at the centre of political debate. Now it barely passes for public comment. It's extraordinary, really. What do they do at Pine Gap? Why are they so coy about it? You've gone there, you don't even fucking know, are you kidding me? What are you clowns up to? What is it? We're just trying to play soccer. Yeah, we're just trying to play soccer in the desert. To intercept electronic communications phone calls. So like this phone call right now. Yeah. We've got to cut him some slack here because, you know, we did put him in a tough position at the last minute, but at the same time, I don't feel like he was the most sensible person to go to for advice. no option but to fucking fang the gate. Once that gate opens, you guys gotta go. You just gotta go. Gunning, gunning towards the facility. Let's see what they'll do. It'll be just fucking hilarious. I'd love it. Well, we've gotten legal advice, I guess, but I'm not sure if talking to Mark was the best idea. I was much more chill about this before I realised they could, you know, legally kill us if we entered. They can shoot us. Since we applied? Yeah. Yeah, but we knew that, right? See if this is recording. I didn't know they could shoot me. You didn't know that. They're not going to shoot us. They won't? There's no way they'll shoot us. If they didn't shoot the people who actually got into the facility while they shoot... That was 20 years ago. Who's kicking the soccer ball, though? No. No, no. You do it. Look at these legs. You're the best kicker we got. I don't know. I'm kind of freaking out a bit about this now. But we've come all this way. It's too late to back out now. We just had to focus on trying to get some sleep. And at 5am, it was showtime. We're going to get into this base. Now, we figured that Donna's main problem was that they snuck in over the mountains looking like these peace-loving hippie activists. But the thing is, no one's actually tried to just drive straight through the front gate pretending they work there. So, we put on our suits. and got ready for our first day of work at the top secret CIA base. Needless to say, everyone was stressing out, except Geordie for some reason. Dude, I'm so, like, chill about this. You're so relaxed. Yeah. I think you kind of want to die. Yeah, I'm kind of just cool with it. I'm just bored. Driving through this sprawling, desolate, Aussie desert, it's hard to imagine a giant American CIA base here. But apparently it's coming up after this turn off. The only people driving down this road are spies. I hate this. Oh, fuck. Just do it. Just do it. It's right here. We shouldn't be here. No, we should. They're gonna shoot us. Give us the sign. There's the sign. Holy shit. Oh, it just says no through road. No, come on, you can see it's a through road. Yeah, this is the lowest. Ah, shit. What, that's their first deceptive decoy, is it? Oh, okay, we better turn around, guys. This can't be it. And the speed limit's 100. And they're going through right over there. I gotta say that, like, not a bad first defence. Start light. Wait, is this the right street, Alex? Yeah, this looks like it goes all the way to Pine Gap. Well, did you click, like... You can't click Pine Gap on Google Maps. You can't have directions. I can't believe this road ends with us going to work in a spy base. You know what's going to be great though? The footage of you sweating bullets pretending that you work there. And these are people that are trained to detect liars. Yep. I'm working. Yes I am. I'm just your average rinky-dink American. You got this. You just go in. I'm going into work, Alexa. Yeah, but I just... yeah. You are going to work. It's not even a lie. And you know what else as well? When they say, do you work here, you can say, yes. Technically, I work exactly where I am. As long as there's a camera on me, I'm working. I can just say it's top secret. I don't think that you can lie. I think it's impossible for you to lie. The closer we got, the more the pressure was getting to us. See, what I'm worried about is I'm really bad at driving automatic. So what if I accidentally run them over? Woah woah woah! What the fuck are you doing? Wow he does suck at automatic He's fucked up at automatic The car's basically driving The car's basically driving Oh shit someone's behind us Oh shit someone's behind us Where did you come from? Oh fuck Just speed up No no he's overtaking We finally got to the first acknowledgement that Pine Gap actually exists, that it's actually here, and you'll be prosecuted if you go any further. So we obviously stopped here to take some YouTube thumbnail photos. Should I be more hyped? Did you hear that? What? It sounded like bombs going off. No. Did you hear that? It sounded like gunshots or like, I think there is a firing range nearby as well. Yeah, Guns. Yeah. It's a firing range. Now look, we don't want to go to jail and this sign says no photography, so I'm sorry but there's no video footage from this point onwards. But, there's no sign saying you can't get someone on Fiverr to make an animation using the audio you recorded. And if there was a s- sign like that we wouldn't see it so I think we're in the clear to show you this. This is it coming up. Oh shit. Look at the American flag. We're gonna get shot. Dude I do not want to be in here. Can you come and meet us outside? Press passing on this land is prohibited. Just go in and ask. Hi there. Hey, how's it going? Good, good. How are you? Good. What's your name? Alexa. Alexa and yeah. No, no, close the gate. Close the gate. Oh, we can go in? Oh, we got the in? No, no, stop. Close the door. Oh. Alright. Okay, can I get to pull back please? Yep. Dude, these guys are legit. Yeah, I think they like us. In the disabled, come on. Yeah, I don't know. You've broken enough laws, man. Yeah, turn off your car please. Yeah, I don't know. It's a rental car, I've got no idea how to use it. You got a license? Yep, I got it on my phone. So what are you doing here today? Just working. So when you work at the base you have something that you have to show me for your centre. A magic trick? Give me your ID. Okay. I don't have my ID, I need the internet connection to get it. No hard copy? No. Is your phone recording? I don't have a hard... Sorry? Is your phone recording? Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Everyone's ID. All right. Who are they? I don't know who those guys are. I need your IDs, guys. So if you have IDs, I can't let you just leave. Why aren't you going after the real criminals? Yeah, what are they doing? What are those guys doing? They're on our phones. Can we come back with them? Can we come back with IDs? You want to put one up your ass? Don't literally put it up your ass. I will, I will. I'll do it. Put it in your buttcheek. Well you can't let us leave if we don't have IDs. We can't go in with IDs. We're catch 22, we're stuck here. Yeah, we're stuck here playing that. We're stuck here. I'm fucked. Hi there. Good. Let's try to get my ID up. All I have is the... You guys With. Who are you with? Who are we with? We're with these guys. We work here. We're like in this... currently we're working. You're working at this space? We're working right here. Okay, you guys stay right there, thank you. I think we're it. We're idiots. This is actually fucked what just happened. Should I get out and ask him? No, no, don't do that. Maybe you can open the window and... Excuse me, can I go home please? I'm scared. Oh no, the gates are closing. Wait, what? We're stuck? Oh, look at that! Wait, what are we meant to do? How come these guys get to leave? We're gonna get shot. We're fucked. Wait, I wanna leave. I feel, you know what this feels like? Like we're just committing suicide. Yeah, I feel like we've done something really stupid. And we're all geeing each other up to like make sure. No, let's just actually ask him now. Let's just say it was a bit, we're done. Yep. Why? Okay, what do you want to do, Jordan? Just keep arguing and lying. Well, we've got to decide what we're actually saying. Are we going to keep talking about how we work here? Just say it one more time. We say we actually just want to go home. No, say we work... We're off shift now. You could ask them. They all look friendly. They're fun. They're gonna be fans of your channel. Yeah. No, this guy doesn't look like he's having this fun. This guy looks serious. He looks upset. Hello. Hello. It is an offence to video and take photos in here. In here, is it? Okay. Yes. So if you're taking photos in here, we can confiscate all that. Okay. Do not do that. Now, a lot of time passed talking to this heavily armed man. So that's... They had us locked in this facility, which was terrifying, but surprisingly, the more we chatted to this guy and answered his questions, the more he started to chill out. But he did make it abundantly clear that we'd go straight to prison if we ever came back. What's your purpose here? Just working. Working? Who do you work for? For ourselves. We're YouTubers. Ah, right. Okay. Do you have your name, though? Yeah, yeah. It's Alexa, and the channel's Boy Boy. Boy Boy. Yeah. Like and subscribe. It's B-O-Y. B-O-Y. Not judging. I watch a lot of YouTube stuff. Well the base doesn't want you here. So you'll have to exit. What goes on in here? Well they don't tell me that. I'm not important enough actually. So yeah it's not an access to anyone that comes along. Alright thanks guys. Thank you. He was casual. Very nice. He was If we do another thing, they're going to come back. Yeah, I don't think we should get arrested over it. Now, it was a pretty intriguing setup they had going. It seemed like the perimeter was staffed by Aussies doing security who had no idea what the Americans were doing inside the base. Nonetheless, they made it clear that we couldn't go back to the front gate without getting arrested. But then it occurred to me, what if we didn't go back at all? What if it was someone else? A completely different person with completely different proportions. It's so stupid. I think it'll work. If you keep smoking a cigarette, I think it works. Now, officer, you'd like to do a search and frisk, would you? Well, I'm gonna have to see you walk. This is awful. I thought the trench coat was gonna be longer and wider. What, you thought... It just doesn't look like it. You thought this was gonna be a convincing discovery. I thought that you'd get past the CIA with this one. I like how you thought it was serious. I thought you thought this had a lot more to it. Dude, dude, this was your plan A. When I bought this, I asked... woman, is it long enough for two people? And she said yes. You're like genuinely disappointed. I thought this was a bit. He's actually disappointed. Well, since our disguise doesn't work and we can't show our face at the main gate anymore, maybe we can try a different approach and get them to let us in using the power of sympathy. We're just innocent soccer players in the middle of nowhere trying to get our ball back. I mean, we thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but we quickly realised we were being followed. We weren't alone. Someone did a shit. Someone did a shit. The CIA is trying to keep us out by making it smell really bad in here. So after a bit of a trek on the opposite side of this five kilometre wide facility, we finally made it to the first outer perimeter of the mine gap. Oh fuck, look at that. What? Actually a fucking camera up on the thing, that white thing. Where? Oh shit. Do you reckon it's not an automatic turret with like a fucking... Nah, it's just a big camera. Fuck, they're going to come now. No, that's cool. At least with a camera here... they'll have proof that we're regular dudes just playing soccer. Oh, oh shit. Oh, who's getting that? I was passing it to you. Maybe we can call them. 11. Is that a number for playing gap? We're legally allowed to go over just to get a soccer ball, right? That's that's the rule. I think so. A little help. Can we get our ball back? Wait... At the very least, was that in or out? Go back to replay. Yeah, they got VAR on that thing. Yeah, yeah, come on. Can someone keep track of that was in? I mean, if they don't arrive soon and give us our ball back, I think it's actually a pretty lousy spy facility. That could have been a bomb. Please don't say that. I mean, please do not say that. No Pine Gap phone number. Can we just post on Twitter? Oh yeah, let's post on Twitter. Let's say... Can we get our ball back please? At the C... Yeah, can we have special exemption? O-O. Now we thought we were being funny, but once we heard the security driving down the road, it dawned on us that we didn't have any footage backed up, and if we got arrested now, it'd all be confiscated. They're definitely coming up. Let's go. Oh shit, they are coming up. Wait, should we stop? Should we not be running away from them? No, don't run. So we ended up sprinting all the way back to our car. Needless to say, everyone was freaking out about our footage, so we had to have a serious conversation about how we're gonna hide it if we get caught. Do we have backups if this gets confiscated? Yeah, Chris told me to put it in my ass. Yeah, okay. No, but if it's on your ass, it's bad though. They're not gonna look for it. Yeah, but it's still on you, so just put it in the car. Did you put it in your ass? Like actually in your ass? I thought you were joking. What do you mean I'm joking? Oh the CIA is gonna search us. I'm gonna pretend to put it in my ass. But isn't the first place they search your ass? No it's not! Yeah! Fuck. That smells so bad. No! Fuck off! Whose SD card was it? Was it one of yours? Probably. I think you can have it. It's not like it's mine, you know? Smells like it might be my property right now. Isn't that what dogs do? It's like no one told you to put it in your ass, you just did it. What? Yeah, yeah! Well where would you put it? Where would you put it? Hide this SD card. No one said hide it, we just turned around and you just stole one and just went... Last time I tried to keep our project safe. Now my fingers smell. It's the second time we were scared away by security, but we weren't ready to give up yet. Now, we know Pine Gap is surrounded on both sides by these mountain ranges, so we decided to follow Donna's example and start climbing some mountains. Yeah, look how close we are to Pine Gap. If we go up on this ridge here, we're gonna be... In prison. 200 meters from the big balls. I mean, I do really want to see the balls. Imagine if we saw the balls. Yeah, I don't want to see the balls. So, we set out for a day of trekking through hills in the outback. If I see the balls, I'm gonna feel like I've committed a crime. Yeah. I've never climbed a mountain in a suit. Well we gotta be inconspicuous, you know? If they see us up there they'll be like, oh carry on fellow spies. And does anyone have snake bandages? No. No, we got nothing. This is actually horrible. Oh that's, that's, well I don't like that. Are there snakes? Yeah. Of course there's snakes out here. There'll be snakes and then how do we fucking carry the person back down and tie them up and fucking... Oh we got ties. That's a snake bandage. Now this turned out to be a very deceptive trek. Every time we got to the top of a ridge there was another plateau and an even bigger ridge behind it. The person just kept moving away from us. Another ridge? There's another ridge, yeah. Do we want to go one more or? Do you reckon that could be the last one? I don't know. Let's look on Google Maps. After the next ridge, there's a road which looks like it's a gate. This is Pine Garp. This is a bit far. We are right here. In the middle of the day, we're like 100 metres away from there. No, it's a couple of kilometres I think. I want to see the balls in real life, a little bit. But I know that if I see them, then someone might be looking at me as well. I still want to get arrested. I'd rather get arrested. There's gunshots. You hear it? We go towards the gunshots? Or we, um... Or we just go back home, have a nice meal, do a video comparing McDonald's and Red Rooster or something. You know, something normal. We decided to continue towards the base, but we were all moving inexplicably slower. It's a lot further than it looks. Yeah, I think we got a good like hour till we get up there. It's not an hour. Isn't it amazing that our fear subsided and our laziness kicked in? It's fucking J-POP! I'm still scared. You're saying we have to go to that one? The horizon. What the hell are you feeling? I mean, it's your call, we came all this way, but it's also, it's also easier not to. You know. It's one of those things, if we get arrested, what happens to the rest of our footage and all that other shit. It's in your ass. It's not anymore, you guys won't let me put it in there anymore. But she was like, they were hiding from the rain. That's a gunshot. Such horrible timing. I hate this. Yeah, they're not shooting at intruders, they're just practicing their aim. For when intruders come? Yeah. Oh, that's the thing, if there's a firing range and you come on the back of it, you just get fucking murdered. I hadn't heard the gunshots until now and they're very clear. Yeah. Ooh! Ah, we can call it. That's gunshots again. I just don't think we should be walking that way. Whenever I've heard a gunshot I've always thought, go the other way. They sound like they're over there. Yeah, I don't think they're going up the mountain. Guns don't have such a big range. Yeah, we'll go that way, they won't get us. We're just peer pressuring each other because we get nothing from being up there. They're so loud. It doesn't sound like a normal gun as well, it sounds like a machine gun. Yeah, that's... Wow! Yeah, that's scary. As if they need that much practice. When was the last time someone tried to get in 20 years ago? Since we didn't want to get shot by surprising a bunch of armed American soldiers in the outback, we decided... to head back. Now, needless to say, I felt a bit silly. We came all this way and didn't really do much. We just showed up at the base and walked around it all day. Honestly, I was worried that we'd wasted a video here and that we didn't really do anything. But the next morning, we realized we'd actually done a lot more than we thought. So we woke up the next morning, it was our last day in Alice Springs, and I had an interview booked. You know, we were meant to be interviewing an Indigenous elder to tell us about, you know, the significance of the land that was stolen from them. But out of nowhere, while we're getting ready, I got this call from the police. Hello? Hello? Yeah, you there mate? Yeah I'm here. Hey, just need to speak to you in regards to an incident that took place out of Find Gap yesterday. Are you still in our place? Yep. Are you available to come into the police station and have a chat? No, no I've got to fly back to Sydney. Where do you fly mate? Hello? Boy, don't give them the flight time so you don't need to talk to them that late. I choked. I obviously had no idea how to handle that call but it was too late. The goddamn police were chasing us. They could rock up at any moment. It was now a race against the clock. We had to pack up the Airbnb and get on that plane out of town. At this point, we started losing our cool. So we're all freaking out. Why don't we just pack up? I'm just saying we're smart enough to be freaking out. Yeah, let's just pack up and go. They will call the airport. But we quickly realised, if the police do catch us, we'll definitely have our footage confiscated and wiped. So we started the two hour long process of backing it all up online. Which gave us a bit of time to just kick back, relax and blame each other for the horrible predicament we're in. We're on the run now. Yeah. I don't really like it. I don't know. I like it because they called you. I'm not the ringleader here, I'm just the one who booked the rental car. This is your channel, Alexa. I'm just the one who booked the rental car. We're all here because of you. I'm just the one who... booked the rental car. I drove the car too. I mean they've probably already got all the videos let's be honest. Yeah that's it if Pine Gas is as good as it is then they would have our footage already. Yeah prove it boys. I've I've hit an easter egg in all of our videos. If you're really the CIA and not just some hucksters trying to fake us for fools you'll know what we did at exactly 9.30, 2am. Now the one upside was that we had enough time to practice some cool lines to deliver to the cops when they catch us. We should do this bit when we're arrested. Ah, fools, fools, fools. I'm right where I want to be. I'm exactly where I want to be. Whilst you guys are busy here at the airport, Pine Gap is left woefully unguarded. I have 10 people sneaking around. Wait, they're gonna get this footage. This is gonna sound so much worse. No, no, no, no, no. No joking. And while our footage is uploading, we've all- also got enough time to tell you to join our Patreon. So in all seriousness, we're being hunted by the federal police. There's no way we'd be brave enough to do that if it wasn't for the support of our patrons, right? Like while it's terrifying, it's also just like really expensive. You know, it's hard to find lawyers who do like national security law and also just like not a lot of lawyers want to take on the CIA. So, you know, with your support, we'll be able to make more videos like this. But if you join our Patreon, you also get a free video every month. You get to join our beautiful Discord community. You know, we have a live Q&A after every video. It's all it's It's just a great time for everyone, right? Okay, back to the video. We were running away from the cops. Okay, with our footage finally backed up, we were ready to head to the airport in a last-ditch attempt to get out of Alice Springs. It's fun you're ready to get arrested, Alex. I don't know. They just want to talk. Yeah. But not... About what? We didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You're watching us. We didn't do anything wrong. Nothing wrong. You know, I think the CAA is not very nice. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The CAA is not good. I love the CAA. Oh, you have? Yeah. I like the CAA. I like the AFB. ...in the old-time police institution, and I think they're very good-looking. Oh, and we made it to the airport, and so far, no police officers waiting for us. But we kept watching our backs. We just needed to get on that plane before they showed up. which started feeling harder and harder since the flight kept getting delayed. At this point, we started thinking the police stalled the flight until they could come and arrest us. But after another anxiety-riddled half an hour, we found ourselves on the tarmac, coming up the stairs and so close to getting back home. And it happened. The plane took off. We did it. I don't think I've ever been happier to be on a plane. We thought we were home free, but, you know, as you're aware, the federal police had a different idea. Hello, Nova. Could your planes come off? Jordan Shanks? Analiska Vloukou. Almost. That means I don't have to come off. If you are on board, just make your way forward to the front of the cabin. Now, we've never spoken to federal police before, and we don't know much about what you're meant to do when talking to cops, but the one thing we do know is that you don't talk to cops. Anything that you say or do will be recorded and made available to the police. So this federal agent turned on his little recording device and, you know, trying to get a statement from us that he could use against us in court. and we just did that thing they do in the movies where they keep saying, like, am I under arrest, am I under arrest? And then, like, when it turned out we weren't under arrest, we just got the hell out of there. I think we can leave then, yeah. Are we free to leave? You're free to leave. I did want to have a quick conversation. No, you're not free to leave. Not helpful talk, no. Yeah. But thanks for that. If I talk, you don't have to. so we made it back home but i don't really know what's meant to happen now like we've been talking to our lawyer non-stop i'm just awake like i'm laying awake at night we're just thinking the feds are going to raid the house at any minute. It's honestly the most uneasy I've ever been in my life. And all of this for just trekking through the outback in our own country. Like, look, we get a bit of criticism on our channel. While the vast majority of our fans are Americans who like our videos, you know, there's a very small group of upset American viewers who don't like what we're saying. And instead of trying to point out our mistakes, they just say that we're obsessed with America. You know, they say we should stay out of it and focus more on our own country. But What no one understands is that this is America, right? I wish it wasn't, but it is, right? We don't have a choice. The Americans just run things here. Like, we can't vote on it. Our politicians won't even talk about it. American politicians can talk about it, though. Their congressmen are constantly invited to visit Pine Gap, but our elected officials can't go anywhere near it, even though it's meant to be our country. It's such a bizarre and pathetic relationship, and they don't pull this kind of shit with anyone else. Like, Canada and Mexico are their neighbours, right? And when America starts telling them what to do or asks them to come along and blow up some random farmers in the Middle East, they tell them to... to fuck off. But their little Aussie lapdogs on the complete other side of the world have always done exactly what they tell us to do. And if you turn on the news in Australia, every single channel will tell you that we actually need the Americans here to defend us from China. China, our biggest trading partner, a country that not only has zero interest in invading us, but they haven't invaded anyone for the past 50 years. Like we're meant to be scared of them, right? But meanwhile, the Americans evaded us a long time ago. Like our country is littered with American soldiers. And if any of our politicians even questions it, they just get rid of it. And if any civilians happen to stumble upon the perimeter of a US base, literally walking through our own country, our federal police will chase us down on behalf of a foreign occupying army. We're in America, right? We're just a giant US military base just floating in Asia. And if, you know, if the Americans decide they want to go to war with China, then our beautiful island home is going to be on the front lines. No one ever gave us a say in it.

I mean until we were pulled off the plane by federal police. If you are on board, just make your way forward to the front of the cabin. Yeah, that's us.

Yeah, fine. I just wanted to have a quick chat to you in relation to either one of you guys. At the remote Pine Gap spy station... A collection of domes in the desert that plays very few Australians know much about at all.

The most powerful American intelligence facility outside of the United States. No, no, close the gate, close the... No, no, no, stop!

This is by far the scariest video we've ever made. We teamed up with Friendly Geordies to sneak into Pine Gap, which is one of the CIA's most important spy bases. But before we get into that, the most obvious question is, what is this giant American base doing on the ground? the other side of the world in the middle of Australia?

Well, first off, it shouldn't be controversial to say the CIA wants to control the world, right? Like, surely there's no one out there who thinks they're not doing that. They've got the most advanced satellites in the world and they're sucking up everyone's information, which, you know... Good on you, but they've got a big problem, right? And I'll explain it to you over there.

All right, so let's pretend this globe here is planet Earth, and then this can of toxic industrial lubricant is a satellite. So these satellites are flying all around Earth, just booming their signals down. But the issue with the Americans, right, is that they've got spy bases here.

They can only access satellites up here. They've got no access to the ones down here. But if they were to build a satellite base in a foreign country like Australia, suddenly...

they've got access to all the satellite signals coming down here. Pretty clever, right? So if they wanted to, you know, send a missile into a wedding in, let's say, in Iraq, or if they wanted to, you know, eavesdrop on conversation...

If they want... If they wanted to eavesdrop on conversations down in Madagascar, they just do it through Pine Gap. Now, thanks to some average-looking whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and much hotter ones like Christopher Boyce, we have access to all these leaked documents exposing the inner workings of Pine Gap.

Now, get this. The base is codenamed Rainfall and it's part of a top secret international spy infrastructure called Five Eyes. These CIA guys are literally out here laughing as Bond films.

It's so embarrassing to read. But thanks to these documents, we know... all about Pine Gap.

We know about their capabilities and how important they are to the US, but you don't really need to read these. I mean, unless you're a YouTuber and you want to look smart, these leaks are redundant. See, the American government is so proud of its surveillance of the whole world that their CIA agents just brag about it at every opportunity anyway.

The Pine Gap satellites are the most sophisticated pieces of military hardware ever created by the United States government. They are very, very effective at intercepting signals. And the person on the other side, of course, can hear that person. as clearly as you can hear me speaking in front of you today.

So who's using that communication signal? Is it Saddam Hussein talking to his generals or is it mum and dad talking to their kids? Now, you may think it's weird that a CIA agent is admitting to a room full of people that he actively spies on their conversations with their kids.

But rest assured, the kind of people who attend CIA lectures are the kind of people whose grandkids stopped speaking to them years ago. And we'll probably forget everything in this lecture in an hour once the bingo game starts. Has anybody here been involved in weapons testing?

I'll start. a few hands up. Now, just to be clear for all the nerds out there, this guy right here is technically an NSA agent, not a CIA agent.

But for the rest of this video, when I say CIA, I mean CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, and every other US intelligence institution. I feel like I'm in the laundry aisle whenever I talk about the US government's monstrous global surveillance apparatus. For the rest of this video, UltraOxy, Free and Gentle, Original, Downy, it's all the CIA.

We're talking about US spy bases here. But Pine Gap wasn't always this hub for global surveillance. For 75,000 years this place was the home of Indigenous Australians who were planet Earth's oldest human civilization.

And then white people showed up. They kind of came out of nowhere 200 years ago and genocided the original Australians. Which conveniently made the outback a lot more spacious and offered some much needed privacy for civilized games of croquet or maybe a massive secret CIA base.

So with the traditional owners of the land out of the way, everything was going well for the CIA in Australia. Until the 60s when all these people inexplicably started dyeing their clothes and doing acid and making weird noises but the one thing these hippies did which wasn't you know super annoying was they decided they don't really like the idea of a shadowy organization that wants to spawn you and control the world and in australia this meant there were constant protests and waves of people trying to break into this giant american spy base in the middle of the outback But let's be real, no one cares what thousands of hippies have to say. The real issue for the CIA came in the 70s when we elected a new leader. A guy called Gough Whitlam. Now he was super unique, firstly because his name's Gough.

Like what the fuck is that? I've never met a guy called Gough. You've definitely never met a guy called Gough. Wikipedia doesn't show any other mentions of another person with the first name Gough.

It's just a crazy, made-up name that'll never, ever exist ever again. But the other thing that made him unique is that he wanted an independent Australia that wasn't going to be bullied by foreign superpowers. He pulled Australian troops out of Vietnam and the Americans were like, what the fuck are you doing, Goff?

I thought we had something special. Remember that time we got all those children and burnt them alive? Well, you're turning your back on all these fun times we had.

And like a classic toxic boyfriend, the CIA started bugging Australian Parliament and surveilling Goff's party. And when Goff found out, he responded by threatening to close Pine Gap. And this was a step too far for the Americans.

the CIA saw Goff as a serious threat, so they simply orchestrated a coup to get rid of the democratically elected leader of Australia. So how did the Americans get rid of our Prime Minister? Well, it turns out there's this completely symbolic position in Australian government called the Governor General.

It's a bullshit remnant of the English monarchy, an unelected person whose only job is to dress like a fucking idiot and rubber stamp everything the parliament votes on. So a guy called John Kerr was the Governor General at the time, and coincidentally, he was also secretly working for the Americans. The CIA called him our man Kerr. They were paying for all his travel and generally sharing him with money so he could, I don't know, buy as many stupid hats as he wanted. And even more coincidentally, it turned out there was this dusty old law that said the Governor General has the power to dismiss the Prime Minister.

And that's exactly what he did. I mean, this has never, ever happened before. The CIA essentially terminated the democratically elected leader of Australia.

The Prime Minister, Mr. Whitlam, has been sacked. The opposition leader, Mr. Fraser, is the new Prime Minister of Australia. He was replaced with a more subservient Prime Minister who immediately renewed Pine Gap's contract and no leader ever since has dared to question all the secret CIA bases spread across our country.

Now, we all know about the Americans and their little hobby of getting rid of democratically elected leaders in enemy countries in the third world, but it turns out they do this to their friends too. We accepted that our island was just a giant US military base and no form of democracy would ever get in the way of that. And by the way, calling Australia a giant US military base isn't an exaggeration. These top secret American bases are literally everywhere. Like this fucking thing.

What the fuck is this? It's even more secretive than Pine Gap. They're the tallest man-made structures in the southern hemisphere, but we have no idea what they're doing.

All we know is that every now and then when a passenger plane flies near it, it mysteriously malfunctions and suddenly plunges to the ground. prompting the International Pilots Association to say, well, we don't know what the American military is doing there and we don't want to know, but we'd like our planes not to fly there anymore. Now, look, all of you know that we're obviously very patriotic, true blue Australians. And unlike this, like, weak and cowardly and pathetic International Pilots Association who choose to just ignore the problem, we think we deserve to know what's going on in our own country, right?

So, you know, obviously we don't have any experience sneaking into a CIA base, let alone the most important one. So we decided to speak to a... lovely lady called Donna, a member of a group called Christians Against All Terrorism, who somehow managed to sneak into the base back in 2006. So how did you actually get into the party? We weren't great, like we're not sleuths.

We weren't... I've never broken into anything before. We kind of didn't know what to do.

So one of our crew went to Bunnings and bought bowl cutters. It was all on camera and everything and later came out in court, the Bunnings guy. Testified that Brian went and bought these bolt cutters.

Waterboarding some poor Bunnings employee to get this information out of him. Now Donna explained to us that one of the ways we justify having a brutal top secret CIA base in the middle of Australia is by technically calling it a US-Australian Joint Defence Facility. So while it's run entirely by the CIA, apparently Australians are meant to have some kind of symbolic role in it as well.

Are there any Australian staff working at POKA? Yeah there are. Um, cleaners. Catering.

I don't think they're in charge. Now Donna obviously couldn't just drive through the front gate, so they set out on a six-hour trek in the middle of the night over desert mountains to get in this way. But the weirdest part is that they told the Defence Minister the exact night they were planning to sneak in.

They said that they were Aussie citizens who were concerned about war crimes and they wanted to do a citizen's inspection of this foreign facility on Australian soil. But for some reason, no one took them seriously. We fell over, we hit fences, we bumped into trees, like walking in the dark. There were cows who started mooing at us like shh shh shh.

When I thought oh this is just ridiculous, like this is pretty crazy. And then I saw lights and it really strikes you. Then I walked closer and I could see the base and I could see little people walking around and I thought... I won't swear. Far out.

I'm not crazy, like that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. That is crazy. I am right to be here. It's fucking 3 o'clock in the morning.

There's people walking around this American spy base in the middle of the desert. What are they doing at 3 or 4 in the morning? And then we heard this, Drop the bolt cutters. On both sides there was AFP with guns. Get on the ground, get on the ground.

I was like, you know what? I've been walking for 60 hours. I said, if I get on the ground, I am not getting up again.

I said, I am so sore. She came behind me and kind of got the back of my head and pushed me to my knees. And I said, OK, all right, I can be on my knees.

And then she got her boot and put it in, into my back. And I was like, like on the ground like this. And I said, you don't have to put your boot in. You don't have to yell at me. I said, you're the ones with the guns.

Now, she may have had secret police standing on her neck, which, you know. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but I'm actually incredibly jealous that she's one of the only Australians to have ever seen the Pine Gap balls with their own eyes. This is one of my photos.

Oh, you got the balls. My dream is to see the balls. Yeah, I really want to see them. So why would a random Christian woman risk potential life imprisonment just to protest this base?

Well, it turns out the story of Pine Gap is much more personal for Donna. She's been there on the ground when Pine Gap's missiles hit their targets. Now, some say the US directly killed about a million people in the war on terror. Others say the figure is closer to 5 million.

We don't know the exact figure, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Like the joke is no one actually cares when an Arab on the other side of the world dies. But Donna and her friends discovered a little war crime hack to make people pay attention. You see, if white people travel to the Middle East and go to these civilian areas in Iraq and just hang out there, it makes it much, much harder for Western governments to bomb that exact location.

This was called the Human Shield Program and it was super effective, apart from the one day that Donna didn't arrive on time. I went to a place called Ashwalla Marketplace. There'd been a missile strike and this had just been a civilian area.

There were a few little market stalls that had opened up for people to rush in and get some food and supplies during the war. And this place was blown to pieces. And I saw a sight that was something I've never seen before, just the chaos.

There were pieces of human flesh around on the ground and puddles of blood. And it was chilling, it was haunting. And I was saying, why here?

Why our marketplace? Why my child? What could I say?

Yeah, you don't have an answer. No answer. The coordinates for that missile came from Pine Gap.

Now obviously Donna was very motivated to get people talking about Pine Gap and lucky for her the police brought as much attention to it as possible. They dug up this 50 year old law from the Cold War called the Defence Special Undertakings Act that had never been used before to claim that Donna was a national security threat and throw her in jail. Long story short, they were thrown in prison until the government realised how bad it looked to throw these cute Christians in jail on behalf of the Americans, when all they essentially did was trek through the outback in their own country. So they eventually reversed the decision and let them go. But the government learnt their lesson and responded by tightening Pine Gap security and rolling out new draconian security laws that gives them the power to detain anyone without charge.

So it's going to be different now. So it's going to be harder for us. Yeah.

Good luck guys. Good luck. Now because of this, no civilians have been brave enough to go in there after Donna. But we're not regular civilians, right?

We're YouTubers. And YouTubers are on the front lines of content, right? We're there, boots on the ground, ready to film whenever a Japanese man commits suicide.

Whoa, did we just find a dead person in a suicide forest? We don't even flinch when the world calls upon us to film ourselves making out with our own sisters. If anyone's brave enough to sneak into the world's most significant CIA base, it's us. Now, these stories of Pine Gap guiding missiles into Iraqi weddings may sound like old news, but don't worry, Pine Gap's still as busy as ever. Right now, while Israel is on a rampant campaign to flatten Gaza so they can have more room to film their thirst traps, Pine Gap is in charge of providing targeting and analysis for their missiles, making sure that they hit the right hospitals and refugee camps and churches.

Because of Pine Gap, Australia is directly responsible for the death of 28,000 Palestinian civilians so far. And we're not even at war with Palestine. I mean, like, while that's like super illegal, it does kind of make sense, right?

I mean, Pine Gap is, you know, a big military base built on stolen indigenous land. It's only right for them to continue the proud tradition of wiping out indigenous populations across the world. Now, in order to get to Pine Gap, we've got to fly to the middle of Australia to a town called Alice Springs. It's a popular tourist destination. where you get to take your family.

It's so whimsical. You've got Indigenous people serving you champagne while you stroll through the desert. With all these fun activities, you wouldn't even know that the CIA tracks every single person who enters the town. Security services of the US, Australia and our allies would typically be alert to anyone who might be coming into the town.

So we figured now that we're on a plane flying to Alice Springs, the only way to not blow out cover in a town full of American spies is to blend in. We're not Aussie YouTubers, you know, we're not collaborating with friendly Geordies to sneak into one of the world's most important CIA bases. No, we're just one of the hundreds of regular, everyday American spies in Alice Springs. Now, we definitely weren't expecting this in the middle of the outback, but there were American accents everywhere.

I think I might have spotted a few spies. Oh man, man. We just had fun. And Geordie didn't waste any time.

He went straight in to investigate. What are you guys doing? They're just coming in.

Now they may have pulled some fancy CIA mind- tricks and managed to convince Geordie they weren't spies but the rest of us weren't so easy to fool. So conspiratorial. They're Americans who live in our city.

I have a way with an American accent he's a spy. Where did they say they were? mines dude look we just have to agree to disagree about these men we encountered at the airport but whatever geordie's probably got bigger problems to focus on like the fact that his house got firebombed and he's receiving death threats from the mob because of his political youtube video either way we obviously weren't going to make any big discoveries by speculating on random americans we find in the airport lobby so we decided to get into the car and drive through a ruined country to get to alice springs That is beautiful!

What are you doing out here? In all honesty we're a bit lost out here. So we thought the best first stop would be the Tourism Information Centre. Are there any viewing spots?

Because I know Mount Gillan you could see it. No, you can't. No, this is a very small road.

When you drive onto that road it tells you to stop. You attempt to go in to find out, you'll be politely asked to leave. It's nothing to see there, they only apparently have guardouts there.

It turns out getting into the base isn't as simple as we thought and our Now spy disguises weren't working very well either. Why have you got the same ties on you? Wearing suits you stand out like. Yeah, that's right. They're all particularly comfortable.

If we want to sneak in successfully, we'll need to study the American spies in their natural habitat. And if you watch as many spy movies as we do, you'd know that the best place to find spies is at the casino. Luckily, there's a massive one just outside of town.

This place is so American. Now this casino was not at all what we expected. There was country music everywhere. It felt like they had airlifted Texas and dropped it in the middle of Australia.

Australia. Now, obviously, we did what we had to do to fit in. We had to gamble. You know, we didn't want to gamble, but we couldn't blow our cover either.

And the fact that we do this in every single video we film with Friendly Geordies is just coincidental, and you shouldn't look into it. So we're in the middle of nowhere, right? Most of the patrons in this outback casino are Indigenous Australians. But then, no joke, everyone else is literally an American who works at the big CIA base just out of town. It's insane.

Now, we obviously came here as a joke, right? We didn't expect to actually like see American spies, but there they were. Just chilling, just hanging out after work, playing some weird American game called shit or poos or... No, it was craps. It's called craps.

What's it like living here? It seems a bit boring. Six hours and you're not really determined. Now, I really wasn't expecting them to be this open about working at Pine Gap. What are you doing there?

Top secret stuff. It felt like they were all trying to impress us and outdo each other with how fancy they... their security clearance was. But I have to say, for a foreign army operating a top secret CIA base in the middle of our country, they were kind of fun to hang out with. Look at this, I'm rich.

Get your monies, bro. Look, we had a fun time. It's a pity they'll probably hate us tomorrow night once they find out the guys they were gambling with the night before were going to sneak into their workplace the next morning. But before we went to bed, we realised we should probably try and get some legal advice before we try to sneak into one of the world's most important CIA bases.

So we called our lawyer, Mark Davis. Hi guys, listen, you're doing me a bloody, a bit of a tough sandwich here. I know fuck all about Pine Gap, I'm finding out quickly. We realised we'd put him in a bit of a tough position, you know, speed reading niche esoteric CIA laws in the middle of the night.

He's a little, there's lots of them, let me have a look at it. Um, okay, we've got security and defence premises, Bill, 2011. Certain members of the ADF can use reasonable and necessary force in the event there's an attack upon ADF premises. Establish a statutory regime of search and seizure powers.

Oh my God. So they're essentially saying they could impose military law upon you if you get too cheeky here. So we'll get five stars.

If we're not actually trespassing on the base, for example, one of them would be kicking a soccer ball over the fence and then asking if we could get our soccer ball back. Well, here's the ask. What are we calling that? Let's have a look back how they would have done that.

That's like a projectile. That's not a projectile, is it? Can they use... Can they use...

Reasonable and necessary force, that is it, this is armed soldiers. In the event of an attack upon ADF premises, do you think the soccer ball's an attack it might be? It looks like the laws have changed quite a lot since Donna went in.

This place has become much more dangerous for civilians. No one is filmed inside the premises, even the perimeter of the premises. for a good 20 years.

When you think of where have you seen such footage? Never. It's pretty hard to find it.

This is a very secretive base now, particularly with the Americans there. Yet there's been almost no coverage of it, has there? Does anyone even try to cover it?

Does it even exist anymore? It used to be at the centre of political debate. Now it barely passes for public comment. It's extraordinary, really.

What do they do at Pine Gap? Why are they so coy about it? You've gone there, you don't even fucking know, are you kidding me?

What are you clowns up to? What is it? We're just trying to play soccer.

Yeah, we're just trying to play soccer in the desert. To intercept electronic communications phone calls. So like this phone call right now. Yeah.

We've got to cut him some slack here because, you know, we did put him in a tough position at the last minute, but at the same time, I don't feel like he was the most sensible person to go to for advice. no option but to fucking fang the gate. Once that gate opens, you guys gotta go.

You just gotta go. Gunning, gunning towards the facility. Let's see what they'll do.

It'll be just fucking hilarious. I'd love it. Well, we've gotten legal advice, I guess, but I'm not sure if talking to Mark was the best idea. I was much more chill about this before I realised they could, you know, legally kill us if we entered. They can shoot us.

Since we applied? Yeah. Yeah, but we knew that, right? See if this is recording. I didn't know they could shoot me.

You didn't know that. They're not going to shoot us. They won't? There's no way they'll shoot us. If they didn't shoot the people who actually got into the facility while they shoot...

That was 20 years ago. Who's kicking the soccer ball, though? No.

No, no. You do it. Look at these legs.

You're the best kicker we got. I don't know. I'm kind of freaking out a bit about this now.

But we've come all this way. It's too late to back out now. We just had to focus on trying to get some sleep.

And at 5am, it was showtime. We're going to get into this base. Now, we figured that Donna's main problem was that they snuck in over the mountains looking like these peace-loving hippie activists. But the thing is, no one's actually tried to just drive straight through the front gate pretending they work there. So, we put on our suits.

and got ready for our first day of work at the top secret CIA base. Needless to say, everyone was stressing out, except Geordie for some reason. Dude, I'm so, like, chill about this.

You're so relaxed. Yeah. I think you kind of want to die. Yeah, I'm kind of just cool with it. I'm just bored.

Driving through this sprawling, desolate, Aussie desert, it's hard to imagine a giant American CIA base here. But apparently it's coming up after this turn off. The only people driving down this road are spies.

I hate this. Oh, fuck. Just do it. Just do it.

It's right here. We shouldn't be here. No, we should.

They're gonna shoot us. Give us the sign. There's the sign. Holy shit.

Oh, it just says no through road. No, come on, you can see it's a through road. Yeah, this is the lowest.

Ah, shit. What, that's their first deceptive decoy, is it? Oh, okay, we better turn around, guys.

This can't be it. And the speed limit's 100. And they're going through right over there. I gotta say that, like, not a bad first defence. Start light. Wait, is this the right street, Alex?

Yeah, this looks like it goes all the way to Pine Gap. Well, did you click, like... You can't click Pine Gap on Google Maps. You can't have directions.

I can't believe this road ends with us going to work in a spy base. You know what's going to be great though? The footage of you sweating bullets pretending that you work there.

And these are people that are trained to detect liars. Yep. I'm working.

Yes I am. I'm just your average rinky-dink American. You got this. You just go in. I'm going into work, Alexa.

Yeah, but I just... yeah. You are going to work. It's not even a lie.

And you know what else as well? When they say, do you work here, you can say, yes. Technically, I work exactly where I am.

As long as there's a camera on me, I'm working. I can just say it's top secret. I don't think that you can lie. I think it's impossible for you to lie.

The closer we got, the more the pressure was getting to us. See, what I'm worried about is I'm really bad at driving automatic. So what if I accidentally run them over? Woah woah woah!

What the fuck are you doing? Wow he does suck at automatic He's fucked up at automatic The car's basically driving The car's basically driving Oh shit someone's behind us Oh shit someone's behind us Where did you come from? Oh fuck Just speed up No no he's overtaking We finally got to the first acknowledgement that Pine Gap actually exists, that it's actually here, and you'll be prosecuted if you go any further.

So we obviously stopped here to take some YouTube thumbnail photos. Should I be more hyped? Did you hear that? What? It sounded like bombs going off.

No. Did you hear that? It sounded like gunshots or like, I think there is a firing range nearby as well. Yeah, Guns.

Yeah. It's a firing range. Now look, we don't want to go to jail and this sign says no photography, so I'm sorry but there's no video footage from this point onwards.

But, there's no sign saying you can't get someone on Fiverr to make an animation using the audio you recorded. And if there was a s- sign like that we wouldn't see it so I think we're in the clear to show you this. This is it coming up. Oh shit.

Look at the American flag. We're gonna get shot. Dude I do not want to be in here. Can you come and meet us outside? Press passing on this land is prohibited.

Just go in and ask. Hi there. Hey, how's it going? Good, good. How are you?

Good. What's your name? Alexa. Alexa and yeah. No, no, close the gate.

Close the gate. Oh, we can go in? Oh, we got the in?

No, no, stop. Close the door. Oh.

Alright. Okay, can I get to pull back please? Yep. Dude, these guys are legit.

Yeah, I think they like us. In the disabled, come on. Yeah, I don't know. You've broken enough laws, man.

Yeah, turn off your car please. Yeah, I don't know. It's a rental car, I've got no idea how to use it. You got a license?

Yep, I got it on my phone. So what are you doing here today? Just working. So when you work at the base you have something that you have to show me for your centre.

A magic trick? Give me your ID. Okay.

I don't have my ID, I need the internet connection to get it. No hard copy? No. Is your phone recording? I don't have a hard...

Sorry? Is your phone recording? Thank you.

Yes. Yeah. Everyone's ID. All right. Who are they?

I don't know who those guys are. I need your IDs, guys. So if you have IDs, I can't let you just leave.

Why aren't you going after the real criminals? Yeah, what are they doing? What are those guys doing? They're on our phones. Can we come back with them?

Can we come back with IDs? You want to put one up your ass? Don't literally put it up your ass.

I will, I will. I'll do it. Put it in your buttcheek.

Well you can't let us leave if we don't have IDs. We can't go in with IDs. We're catch 22, we're stuck here. Yeah, we're stuck here playing that. We're stuck here.

I'm fucked. Hi there. Good.

Let's try to get my ID up. All I have is the... You guys With. Who are you with?

Who are we with? We're with these guys. We work here.

We're like in this... currently we're working. You're working at this space? We're working right here.

Okay, you guys stay right there, thank you. I think we're it. We're idiots. This is actually fucked what just happened. Should I get out and ask him?

No, no, don't do that. Maybe you can open the window and... Excuse me, can I go home please?

I'm scared. Oh no, the gates are closing. Wait, what?

We're stuck? Oh, look at that! Wait, what are we meant to do? How come these guys get to leave?

We're gonna get shot. We're fucked. Wait, I wanna leave.

I feel, you know what this feels like? Like we're just committing suicide. Yeah, I feel like we've done something really stupid. And we're all geeing each other up to like make sure. No, let's just actually ask him now.

Let's just say it was a bit, we're done. Yep. Why?

Okay, what do you want to do, Jordan? Just keep arguing and lying. Well, we've got to decide what we're actually saying. Are we going to keep talking about how we work here?

Just say it one more time. We say we actually just want to go home. No, say we work... We're off shift now.

You could ask them. They all look friendly. They're fun.

They're gonna be fans of your channel. Yeah. No, this guy doesn't look like he's having this fun. This guy looks serious. He looks upset.

Hello. Hello. It is an offence to video and take photos in here. In here, is it? Okay.

Yes. So if you're taking photos in here, we can confiscate all that. Okay. Do not do that. Now, a lot of time passed talking to this heavily armed man.

So that's... They had us locked in this facility, which was terrifying, but surprisingly, the more we chatted to this guy and answered his questions, the more he started to chill out. But he did make it abundantly clear that we'd go straight to prison if we ever came back. What's your purpose here?

Just working. Working? Who do you work for?

For ourselves. We're YouTubers. Ah, right.

Okay. Do you have your name, though? Yeah, yeah.

It's Alexa, and the channel's Boy Boy. Boy Boy. Yeah.

Like and subscribe. It's B-O-Y. B-O-Y. Not judging.

I watch a lot of YouTube stuff. Well the base doesn't want you here. So you'll have to exit. What goes on in here? Well they don't tell me that.

I'm not important enough actually. So yeah it's not an access to anyone that comes along. Alright thanks guys. Thank you.

He was casual. Very nice. He was If we do another thing, they're going to come back.

Yeah, I don't think we should get arrested over it. Now, it was a pretty intriguing setup they had going. It seemed like the perimeter was staffed by Aussies doing security who had no idea what the Americans were doing inside the base.

Nonetheless, they made it clear that we couldn't go back to the front gate without getting arrested. But then it occurred to me, what if we didn't go back at all? What if it was someone else?

A completely different person with completely different proportions. It's so stupid. I think it'll work. If you keep smoking a cigarette, I think it works.

Now, officer, you'd like to do a search and frisk, would you? Well, I'm gonna have to see you walk. This is awful.

I thought the trench coat was gonna be longer and wider. What, you thought... It just doesn't look like it. You thought this was gonna be a convincing discovery.

I thought that you'd get past the CIA with this one. I like how you thought it was serious. I thought you thought this had a lot more to it. Dude, dude, this was your plan A. When I bought this, I asked...

woman, is it long enough for two people? And she said yes. You're like genuinely disappointed. I thought this was a bit.

He's actually disappointed. Well, since our disguise doesn't work and we can't show our face at the main gate anymore, maybe we can try a different approach and get them to let us in using the power of sympathy. We're just innocent soccer players in the middle of nowhere trying to get our ball back.

I mean, we thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but we quickly realised we were being followed. We weren't alone. Someone did a shit.

Someone did a shit. The CIA is trying to keep us out by making it smell really bad in here. So after a bit of a trek on the opposite side of this five kilometre wide facility, we finally made it to the first outer perimeter of the mine gap. Oh fuck, look at that.

What? Actually a fucking camera up on the thing, that white thing. Where? Oh shit. Do you reckon it's not an automatic turret with like a fucking...

Nah, it's just a big camera. Fuck, they're going to come now. No, that's cool. At least with a camera here... they'll have proof that we're regular dudes just playing soccer.

Oh, oh shit. Oh, who's getting that? I was passing it to you.

Maybe we can call them. 11. Is that a number for playing gap? We're legally allowed to go over just to get a soccer ball, right?

That's that's the rule. I think so. A little help.

Can we get our ball back? Wait... At the very least, was that in or out?

Go back to replay. Yeah, they got VAR on that thing. Yeah, yeah, come on.

Can someone keep track of that was in? I mean, if they don't arrive soon and give us our ball back, I think it's actually a pretty lousy spy facility. That could have been a bomb.

Please don't say that. I mean, please do not say that. No Pine Gap phone number. Can we just post on Twitter?

Oh yeah, let's post on Twitter. Let's say... Can we get our ball back please? At the C... Yeah, can we have special exemption?

O-O. Now we thought we were being funny, but once we heard the security driving down the road, it dawned on us that we didn't have any footage backed up, and if we got arrested now, it'd all be confiscated. They're definitely coming up.

Let's go. Oh shit, they are coming up. Wait, should we stop?

Should we not be running away from them? No, don't run. So we ended up sprinting all the way back to our car.

Needless to say, everyone was freaking out about our footage, so we had to have a serious conversation about how we're gonna hide it if we get caught. Do we have backups if this gets confiscated? Yeah, Chris told me to put it in my ass. Yeah, okay. No, but if it's on your ass, it's bad though.

They're not gonna look for it. Yeah, but it's still on you, so just put it in the car. Did you put it in your ass? Like actually in your ass? I thought you were joking.

What do you mean I'm joking? Oh the CIA is gonna search us. I'm gonna pretend to put it in my ass.

But isn't the first place they search your ass? No it's not! Yeah!

Fuck. That smells so bad. No! Fuck off!

Whose SD card was it? Was it one of yours? Probably.

I think you can have it. It's not like it's mine, you know? Smells like it might be my property right now.

Isn't that what dogs do? It's like no one told you to put it in your ass, you just did it. What?

Yeah, yeah! Well where would you put it? Where would you put it?

Hide this SD card. No one said hide it, we just turned around and you just stole one and just went... Last time I tried to keep our project safe.

Now my fingers smell. It's the second time we were scared away by security, but we weren't ready to give up yet. Now, we know Pine Gap is surrounded on both sides by these mountain ranges, so we decided to follow Donna's example and start climbing some mountains.

Yeah, look how close we are to Pine Gap. If we go up on this ridge here, we're gonna be... In prison. 200 meters from the big balls. I mean, I do really want to see the balls.

Imagine if we saw the balls. Yeah, I don't want to see the balls. So, we set out for a day of trekking through hills in the outback. If I see the balls, I'm gonna feel like I've committed a crime. Yeah.

I've never climbed a mountain in a suit. Well we gotta be inconspicuous, you know? If they see us up there they'll be like, oh carry on fellow spies.

And does anyone have snake bandages? No. No, we got nothing.

This is actually horrible. Oh that's, that's, well I don't like that. Are there snakes?

Yeah. Of course there's snakes out here. There'll be snakes and then how do we fucking carry the person back down and tie them up and fucking... Oh we got ties.

That's a snake bandage. Now this turned out to be a very deceptive trek. Every time we got to the top of a ridge there was another plateau and an even bigger ridge behind it. The person just kept moving away from us. Another ridge?

There's another ridge, yeah. Do we want to go one more or? Do you reckon that could be the last one? I don't know. Let's look on Google Maps.

After the next ridge, there's a road which looks like it's a gate. This is Pine Garp. This is a bit far.

We are right here. In the middle of the day, we're like 100 metres away from there. No, it's a couple of kilometres I think. I want to see the balls in real life, a little bit.

But I know that if I see them, then someone might be looking at me as well. I still want to get arrested. I'd rather get arrested. There's gunshots.

You hear it? We go towards the gunshots? Or we, um...

Or we just go back home, have a nice meal, do a video comparing McDonald's and Red Rooster or something. You know, something normal. We decided to continue towards the base, but we were all moving inexplicably slower. It's a lot further than it looks. Yeah, I think we got a good like hour till we get up there.

It's not an hour. Isn't it amazing that our fear subsided and our laziness kicked in? It's fucking J-POP!

I'm still scared. You're saying we have to go to that one? The horizon. What the hell are you feeling? I mean, it's your call, we came all this way, but it's also, it's also easier not to.

You know. It's one of those things, if we get arrested, what happens to the rest of our footage and all that other shit. It's in your ass.

It's not anymore, you guys won't let me put it in there anymore. But she was like, they were hiding from the rain. That's a gunshot.

Such horrible timing. I hate this. Yeah, they're not shooting at intruders, they're just practicing their aim.

For when intruders come? Yeah. Oh, that's the thing, if there's a firing range and you come on the back of it, you just get fucking murdered.

I hadn't heard the gunshots until now and they're very clear. Yeah. Ooh! Ah, we can call it. That's gunshots again.

I just don't think we should be walking that way. Whenever I've heard a gunshot I've always thought, go the other way. They sound like they're over there.

Yeah, I don't think they're going up the mountain. Guns don't have such a big range. Yeah, we'll go that way, they won't get us. We're just peer pressuring each other because we get nothing from being up there.

They're so loud. It doesn't sound like a normal gun as well, it sounds like a machine gun. Yeah, that's... Wow!

Yeah, that's scary. As if they need that much practice. When was the last time someone tried to get in 20 years ago? Since we didn't want to get shot by surprising a bunch of armed American soldiers in the outback, we decided... to head back.

Now, needless to say, I felt a bit silly. We came all this way and didn't really do much. We just showed up at the base and walked around it all day.

Honestly, I was worried that we'd wasted a video here and that we didn't really do anything. But the next morning, we realized we'd actually done a lot more than we thought. So we woke up the next morning, it was our last day in Alice Springs, and I had an interview booked.

You know, we were meant to be interviewing an Indigenous elder to tell us about, you know, the significance of the land that was stolen from them. But out of nowhere, while we're getting ready, I got this call from the police. Hello? Hello?

Yeah, you there mate? Yeah I'm here. Hey, just need to speak to you in regards to an incident that took place out of Find Gap yesterday.

Are you still in our place? Yep. Are you available to come into the police station and have a chat? No, no I've got to fly back to Sydney.

Where do you fly mate? Hello? Boy, don't give them the flight time so you don't need to talk to them that late.

I choked. I obviously had no idea how to handle that call but it was too late. The goddamn police were chasing us. They could rock up at any moment. It was now a race against the clock.

We had to pack up the Airbnb and get on that plane out of town. At this point, we started losing our cool. So we're all freaking out.

Why don't we just pack up? I'm just saying we're smart enough to be freaking out. Yeah, let's just pack up and go.

They will call the airport. But we quickly realised, if the police do catch us, we'll definitely have our footage confiscated and wiped. So we started the two hour long process of backing it all up online.

Which gave us a bit of time to just kick back, relax and blame each other for the horrible predicament we're in. We're on the run now. Yeah. I don't really like it.

I don't know. I like it because they called you. I'm not the ringleader here, I'm just the one who booked the rental car.

This is your channel, Alexa. I'm just the one who booked the rental car. We're all here because of you.

I'm just the one who... booked the rental car. I drove the car too.

I mean they've probably already got all the videos let's be honest. Yeah that's it if Pine Gas is as good as it is then they would have our footage already. Yeah prove it boys. I've I've hit an easter egg in all of our videos.

If you're really the CIA and not just some hucksters trying to fake us for fools you'll know what we did at exactly 9.30, 2am. Now the one upside was that we had enough time to practice some cool lines to deliver to the cops when they catch us. We should do this bit when we're arrested. Ah, fools, fools, fools. I'm right where I want to be.

I'm exactly where I want to be. Whilst you guys are busy here at the airport, Pine Gap is left woefully unguarded. I have 10 people sneaking around.

Wait, they're gonna get this footage. This is gonna sound so much worse. No, no, no, no, no. No joking.

And while our footage is uploading, we've all- also got enough time to tell you to join our Patreon. So in all seriousness, we're being hunted by the federal police. There's no way we'd be brave enough to do that if it wasn't for the support of our patrons, right? Like while it's terrifying, it's also just like really expensive. You know, it's hard to find lawyers who do like national security law and also just like not a lot of lawyers want to take on the CIA.

So, you know, with your support, we'll be able to make more videos like this. But if you join our Patreon, you also get a free video every month. You get to join our beautiful Discord community. You know, we have a live Q&A after every video.

It's all it's It's just a great time for everyone, right? Okay, back to the video. We were running away from the cops.

Okay, with our footage finally backed up, we were ready to head to the airport in a last-ditch attempt to get out of Alice Springs. It's fun you're ready to get arrested, Alex. I don't know.

They just want to talk. Yeah. But not...

About what? We didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. You're watching us. We didn't do anything wrong. Nothing wrong. You know, I think the CAA is not very nice.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The CAA is not good. I love the CAA.

Oh, you have? Yeah. I like the CAA.

I like the AFB. ...in the old-time police institution, and I think they're very good-looking. Oh, and we made it to the airport, and so far, no police officers waiting for us. But we kept watching our backs. We just needed to get on that plane before they showed up.

which started feeling harder and harder since the flight kept getting delayed. At this point, we started thinking the police stalled the flight until they could come and arrest us. But after another anxiety-riddled half an hour, we found ourselves on the tarmac, coming up the stairs and so close to getting back home. And it happened.

The plane took off. We did it. I don't think I've ever been happier to be on a plane. We thought we were home free, but, you know, as you're aware, the federal police had a different idea.

Hello, Nova. Could your planes come off? Jordan Shanks?

Analiska Vloukou. Almost. That means I don't have to come off.

If you are on board, just make your way forward to the front of the cabin. Now, we've never spoken to federal police before, and we don't know much about what you're meant to do when talking to cops, but the one thing we do know is that you don't talk to cops. Anything that you say or do will be recorded and made available to the police. So this federal agent turned on his little recording device and, you know, trying to get a statement from us that he could use against us in court. and we just did that thing they do in the movies where they keep saying, like, am I under arrest, am I under arrest?

And then, like, when it turned out we weren't under arrest, we just got the hell out of there. I think we can leave then, yeah. Are we free to leave? You're free to leave.

I did want to have a quick conversation. No, you're not free to leave. Not helpful talk, no.

Yeah. But thanks for that. If I talk, you don't have to. so we made it back home but i don't really know what's meant to happen now like we've been talking to our lawyer non-stop i'm just awake like i'm laying awake at night we're just thinking the feds are going to raid the house at any minute.

It's honestly the most uneasy I've ever been in my life. And all of this for just trekking through the outback in our own country. Like, look, we get a bit of criticism on our channel.

While the vast majority of our fans are Americans who like our videos, you know, there's a very small group of upset American viewers who don't like what we're saying. And instead of trying to point out our mistakes, they just say that we're obsessed with America. You know, they say we should stay out of it and focus more on our own country.

But What no one understands is that this is America, right? I wish it wasn't, but it is, right? We don't have a choice. The Americans just run things here.

Like, we can't vote on it. Our politicians won't even talk about it. American politicians can talk about it, though. Their congressmen are constantly invited to visit Pine Gap, but our elected officials can't go anywhere near it, even though it's meant to be our country. It's such a bizarre and pathetic relationship, and they don't pull this kind of shit with anyone else.

Like, Canada and Mexico are their neighbours, right? And when America starts telling them what to do or asks them to come along and blow up some random farmers in the Middle East, they tell them to... to fuck off.

But their little Aussie lapdogs on the complete other side of the world have always done exactly what they tell us to do. And if you turn on the news in Australia, every single channel will tell you that we actually need the Americans here to defend us from China. China, our biggest trading partner, a country that not only has zero interest in invading us, but they haven't invaded anyone for the past 50 years.

Like we're meant to be scared of them, right? But meanwhile, the Americans evaded us a long time ago. Like our country is littered with American soldiers. And if any of our politicians even questions it, they just get rid of it.

And if any civilians happen to stumble upon the perimeter of a US base, literally walking through our own country, our federal police will chase us down on behalf of a foreign occupying army. We're in America, right? We're just a giant US military base just floating in Asia. And if, you know, if the Americans decide they want to go to war with China, then our beautiful island home is going to be on the front lines. No one ever gave us a say in it.

Transcript for:Pine Gap: Australia's Surveillance Dilemma

Transcript for:
Pine Gap: Australia's Surveillance Dilemma